Netflix’s stellar documentary offerings got a boost this week with the latest from acclaimed filmmaker Kirby Dick, whose latest film, The Bleeding Edge, is a terrifying piece of agitation about the medical device industry. Just when you thought you’d covered everything you need to be afraid of comes this nightmare of barely regulated devices that are being implanted in people and then causing horrible, life-altering complications. It’s no walk in the park, but it certainly feels urgent.

THE BLEEDING EDGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The table is set early on, when one of the medical professionals being interviewed says, “People think Pharma has power. No, no no. The device industry has much more power than Pharma.” By “device industry,” he’s talking about medical devices, everything from steel stents to pacemakers to artificial joints. Like everything in the medical industry, most of these things have benefitted and even saved lives. But like everything in the medical industry, there’s a lot that is subject to fast-tracking in a way that can really harm patients. Time and time again, the for-profit medical industry opts for that profit over care, and that tends to be the common denominator here. That, plus a word that you often hear around Silicon Valley discussions: “innovation.” New products, new strategies, and new devices that are meant to revolutionize the way we treat [X] or [Y] condition — they hold the potential to change the industry. As long as they’re safe.

The Bleeding Edge focuses on four types of medical devices: the Essure contraceptive implant, cobalt-based metal-on-metal artificial hip sockets, vaginal mesh, and the Da Vinci surgical robot. for each device, Dick presents a parade of convincing, horrifying evidence of malfunction, malpractice, and complete devastation. And in almost every case (with the exception of the hip replacements, where the patients were male), the patients were women. Watching this film, it’s almost impossible not to feel the sting of how casually indifferent the medical establishment can be to women who know something’s not right in their bodies. The stories of uncontrollable bleeding, pain, hysterectomies, near-death emergencies — it can be almost too difficult to bear even for the 100 minutes the film is asking of you. But there’s an urgency there, as well as a finger pointed directly at the de-regulation-obsessed Trump administration, which inherits a broken FDA process for approving medical devices and predictably makes it worse.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Kirby Dick’s earlier films like Outrage (about closeted gay politicians making anti-gay laws) and This Film Is Not Yet Rated (about the film ratings-board hypocrisy) were loud and brash, but his style has matured as his subjects have become more solemn. His The Invisible War and The Hunting Ground have advocated against sexual assault in the military and on college campuses, respectively. There is a similar, laudable concern for women who have been victimized in this film as well.

Memorable Dialogue: Quite a few lines from this movie will haunt you. Some will inspire, such as when Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro spoke to a group of Essure survivors and activists and told them that activism and agitation from outside Washington is the best way to get change. “Welcome to the NFL,” she said.

But amid some of the descriptions of horrific medical complications, the bluntness with which some of these people are able to speak about the worst things feels just this side of comedic. It’s not. It’s terrifying. But the editing of this moment is textbook.

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Single Best Shot: It’s a documentary, so it’s not overflowing with showy camera work, but Dick was smart to know to wait for this nurse to react to the laundry list of complications this one woman from Western New York had suffered. She’s a nurse, she’s heard it all, but at some point even she had to be like, “Holy Crap.”

Our Take: It’ll give you nightmares and have you calling all your female relatives and asking all sorts of invasive questions, but if a movie like this doesn’t open some eyes about for-profit health care, few things will.